Berger, minerality, terroir...

Dan Berger penned an article about terroir after attending the UCD Terroir 2006 confrence last week. [read it here]

Problems I find within it? Well, for starters he...

• suggests soil minerals affect the aroma & taste of the finished wine [those differences are on a parts-per-million level, and these soil mineral influences are so inconsequential, minor and ephemeral in nature that they essentially aren't part of the tasting experience for human beings]
• suggests larger geographic app's don't deliver terroir, while smaller apps DO [Helllooooo! can you spell "pretentious"...?]
• suggests the recent terroir conferences were partly about how irked 'professors' were that terroir was being 'ignored' by critics [a tacit acknowledgement perhaps that terroir is currently of more 'academic' interest than usefulness to consumers]
• suggests the problem is the 100 pt scale for rating wines [say what..?]
• claims that more extracted wines 'ALWAYS SEEM' to garner higher ratings [is it possible - just slightly possible - that people might actually prefer these wines? And does he not read Jancis Robinson? Or Clive Coates, etc?]
• suggests that critic's don't bother with subtle influences - such as he claims that Terroir influences are [a wild suggestion since weather and climate are included in his definition] when rating wines with a 100 pt system
• WTF?! And who gives a shit about what Randall Graham thinks? He's made some good wines, but I'm not about to follow him around - the guy's made some pretty loopy statements in the past [not to mention Randall's new found love of Biodynamics, which is pure bunk...]
• why does he start out by saying that it's "true that each grape-growing plot of land has it's own unique mineral content, which impacts aroma and taste

I appreciate climatic and weather related differences in wines, and have come to expect them. But listen, just 'cuz someone rates a wine using a 100 pt scale doesn't mean they rate wines from Tasmania the same as they would a wine from Texas [climate and winemaking techniques COUNT people!]...

For Dan to prove his statements he would have to reveal why grapes picked on the same day by the same people, from the same vineyard block and fermented in identical ways by the same vintner & crew still turn out different from each other.

Without being able to do that, he leaves the door wide open, and his premise seems to escape from him.